Mark Twain once said "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first." Basically the idea is to get the most onerous task done and over with so you can get on with your day. Other wise you spend the whole day dreading the pending task.
There is always something in quilting that one or more of us doesn't enjoy. I don't particularly enjoy stitching down the binding. My daughter Tatianna finds it rather Zen. I don't care for laying out quilt blocks, mostly because I don't have the surface to do the whole quilt and so I am guessing about placement. Well, my most recent frogs were the cobblestone and windmill quilt blocks and the batik strip quilt blocks. These are bigger quilts and I had no place large enough to lay them out.
This past week I have been home due to illness. (Not covid-19 thankfully) I spent the week in bed. While laying in my bed, it occurred to me that the wall at the head of my bed was about 72 inches wide and there wasn't anything on it. If I moved my bed out away from the wall, I could tack up my portable design wall.
Friday morning I got up just before noon and actually got dressed. I was finally feeling good enough to do something. I ate some chicken soup and then debated what I was going to work on. There were the strips I needed to cut for the simply squares quilt. And all I needed to do for that was set up the ironing board and press the fabric first. Or I could set up the design wall and lay out the quilts.
I should mention that I rather like to cut fabric and I don't mind pressing fabric at all so working on the simply squares quilt wouldn't have been an issue with me. Laying out quilts on the other hand is not something I particularly enjoy. Largely because I can't usually lay out the whole quilt at once since I don't have a large enough space. Which makes it difficult to keep the appearance balanced. A problem I could rectify if I weren't so determined to make random and/or scrappy quilts.
With the frog quote in mind I proceeded to pull my bed away from the wall. Then tacked up my 72" x 72" design wall. I decided to do the cobble stones and windmill blocks first. I chose to do that quilt first because the color placement was going to be a nightmare. I knew that I had only one or two windmill blocks for a few of the colors. It wasn't going to be easy to get everything spread out evenly. Basically it was the biggest of the two frogs. It took a few hours and a some creative thinking but I got it laid out. It is stacked and clipped by rows ready to be stitched together. But after all of that I needed a nap. It was too much exertion for my still weak body.
After the nap I grabbed the next quilt. This quilt was made from batik jelly rolls that were sewn into strip sets. I cut the strips sets into blocks. These block were larger and I needed to put a sashing strip between the blocks. Also some of the prints looked...well for lack of a better word..."muddy". I needed to make sure that the "muddy" blocks were spread out among the bright blocks. When I pieced this quilt I was going for a random pattern. So there were only 4-5 blocks that were the same of each strip set. Again I needed to spread all of these out.
Well, I started laying out the quilt and could only lay out half the quilt at a time. Since the whole point in laying the quilt out was to ensure the fabrics were spread out over the whole quilt, that was a problem. Fortunately I am a decent problem solver. After I was satisfied with how it looked. I stacked up the top two rows and put them aside. I moved up the remaining three rows. Then added the next two row to the bottom. I stood back and moved blocks around. Then sat and looked at it. When I was satisfied I again stacked off the top two rows and moved up the remaining three rows. After the last two rows were added, At this point it was bed time. I would finish have to finish it off on Saturday. I ran some errands Saturday morning then I went back to work on the quilt. Then when I was happy with it, I stacked off all the remaining rows. I will probably start sewing these blocks over the next few weeks.
On Sunday, I did start cutting the strips for the simply squares quilt. As I was finishing cutting the strips I realized that I didn't have enough of the white fabric I had. In fact I was 5 inches short. I was two strips shy of what I needed to do the sashing strips and inner border. Time to rethink the border. I am thinking that I will do a narrow black border and a wider green border with black binding.
I had a couple of epiphanies this week as well. One is that a 72" x72" design wall is not big enough to lay out a largish quilt. it's great for baby and throw sizes but a twin size is a little bit of a tight fit. I told my husband that I need an 8ft x 8ft design wall. Which is still a little tight for laying out big quilts but is better than what I have. He is actually working on the design for it. He said he could go wider but not taller than 8ft. So I am eagerly awaiting my design wall.
The next epiphany was just how easy it is to change the appearance of the quilt. As I was laying out the batik strip quilt, my son told me that my pattern was off. I replied that it can't be off since there wasn't really a pattern. He then said all of the bright colors are drifting down and to left. I stepped back and looked and he was right. The lower left side did seem to have more bright colors than the upper right side. So I moved two blocks and stood back. The whole appearance of the quilt had changed. Moving just two blocks balanced out the whole quilt.
I also came to realize just what a good upper arm work out laying out quilt blocks is. I moved the blocks around a bit on both quilts. I sure felt it in my upper arms for the next two days. I think I need to do that more often.
The last epiphany I had was while I was cutting strips. Actually while I was cutting down strips into 5 inch rectangles. You see, I like gadgets and so I have a Klutz glove and a Gypsy Gripper. I got both of these years ago to protect my hands while using a rotary cutter. After a few months I just kind of stopped using them. I have for years cut my fabric without any issue or injury.
That is until Sunday. I was sitting at my desk cutting the strips down and video chatting with my daughter and granddaughters. When I all of a sudden I felt the sting. I had sliced a rather thick piece of skin off my finger. I learned that I am not as proficient at multi-tasking as I thought I was. My rotary blade was sharp and I didn't even feel the cut until the air hit it. The thing is I was distracted and while I was being careful with the measurements, I got careless with my finger placement. I need to be more focused while using my rotary cutter. As a result of that lesson I am nursing a very sore index finger. I did get lucky though, there was no blood on the cutting mat or the white fabric. So Yay for that.
Well that was my week. Funny thing is I've been so busy (and tired/still recuperating) that this post took me a week to write. Now back to eating frogs.
What quilting task don't you care for?
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